A former security staff of a popular homoeopathy clinic on Elgin Road has been arrested for allegedly using its name to run clinics with false claims that doctors from the original clinic were treating the patients.

Police said they received a complaint from officials of Dr Prasanta Banerji Homeopathic Research Clinic (PBHRC) around a month ago, alleging that one of their former employees, Pradip Paul, was fraudulently using their name to run multiple clinics with bogus claims that these were extensions of the PBHRC.

The officials reported the alleged fraud to Bhowanipore police station on May 13.

“We came across a prescription that had our clinic’s name on it, but was not issued by us. Later, we found it was issued from one of the clinics that was being run misusing our clinic’s name,” said Isha Banerji, director and senior practitioner PBHRC.

She said the clinic’s main unit was located on Elgin Road and they had just one more branch in the Sunderbans.

Paul had allegedly been running at least two clinics — at Gangasagar and Namkhana — claiming those to be branches of the main unit on Elgin Road.

“Paul and his associates allegedly lured people to visit their clinics at Gangasagar and Namkhana with false assurances that they were being treated by or under the supervision of doctors coming from the Elgin Road clinic. This amounts to cheating, criminal breach of trust by way of forgery,” said an officer of the detective department at Lalbazar.

According to officials at the Elgin Road clinic, Paul had been using photographs and promotional texts of the original clinic to give the impression that his clinics were extensions of the original one.

“Paul was terminated from office last March because of disciplinary complaints against him. We have learned that he had been running the fake clinics since November 2024,” said Banerji.